Neutral
by yutamiyu
Summary: House reluctantly turns to Cameron during the stages of his detox.


A/N: This fic takes place _during _the events of "Detox" and therefore is full of spoilers for the episode. Bit of a smut warning for the end. You have been warned.

_The pills don't make me high. They make me neutral.  
_

He is there, leaning against the wall, when she returns home.

She manages to keep her focus enough to pull out her keys and unlock the door to her apartment, secretly pleased that she managed to stay calm the entire time. Neither says a word as he limps into her apartment and sits in her armchair.

"It's Wilson's night off," he says in explanation. "He needs to see his wife once in a while. Keep up the facade of a marriage."

Hands on her hips, she asks, "Why are you here?"

He reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a prescription bottle, placing it on the table. "Foreman filled this for me today. Get rid of it."

She does not move. "Why didn't you throw them away yourself?"

"Force of habit," he responds. Lifting his chin towards the bottle, he continues, "Take them, or I will."

Her eyes trail over his bandaged fingers. "Maybe that's not such a bad thing," she muses quietly. "Look at yourself--winning a bet isn't worth all this. You're in pain."

"I'm always in pain," he snaps. "It comes as part of the whole infarction deal." He scrubs a hand over his stubble. "Just take the damn pills, Cameron."

She hesitates before stepping forward and snatching the pills off of the table, idly turning the bottle around in her fingers.

"Do you...want something to drink?" she finally asks.

"Scotch, if you have it. Beer otherwise. None of that girly shit."

She crosses into her kitchen and places the bottle of Vicodin on the windowsill before reaching into her refrigerator and pulling out two cold bottles. Walking back into the living room, she settles back onto the couch and pops the caps off of both drinks.

He reaches for his beer and leans back into the chair, closing his eyes and letting his head loll back. He is silent as he drinks. The silence is unnerving but not surprising.

"How long has it been?" she finally asks.

"Four days. I don't know why you all insist on giving it to me in hours. It's depressing." He pushes his body forward long enough to set his empty bottle on the table. "I wouldn't turn down another," he continues, his form of request, leaning back into the chair once more.

"Foreman was just worried about you," she calls from the kitchen. "We all are." The beer she places into his outstretched hand is already open.

"Foreman," he counters, "is a real saint. Always looking out for my best interests. Or maybe he's just looking out for his--they're so close, it's hard to tell them apart."

She shakes her head and takes a large swig of her beer. Her eyes run over his leg and she tries, "How bad is it?"

"That's a dumb question."

She sighs. "You're right. I forgot that it's bad for me to actually give a shit about you," she retorts, "especially if you're in pain." When one of his eyes pops open to catch hers, she continues, "It's not a dumb question. Not when asked in context of how you've been acting at work."

He groans and pushes himself forward again, lacing the neck of the beer bottle between two fingers. "I'm doing just fine."

Her voice rises, constricts, hurts. "You're fine? I changed the trash bag in your office twice today. Were you sick in the bathroom, too? You're pale. Your eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. This morning, you were working on some sort of delay...you were sluggish and non-responsive. Your pain is dictating the rest of your behavior. It's affecting the way you're treating Keith."

He slams the bottle on the table and awkwardly pushes himself to his feet. "If I wanted a lecture, I could just as easily have gone to Cuddy," he mutters. "At least then I would have gotten to see some cleavage."

She ignores the second and concentrates instead on the first. "But you didn't go to Dr. Cuddy," she notes. "You came to me. Not only that but you gave me an entire bottle of Vicodin to insure that you didn't take any." She takes a deep breath. "You trust me. You want to see this through the next seventy-two hours...and if I can help, I'd like to. Please."

He says nothing, but limps out of her door and towards the elevator.

------------------

She is surprised to hear the rapping of handle against wood on her door the next night.

She notices several things immediately. The heaviness of his limp as he walks into her apartment. The contrast of joint stiffness and complete disconnection as he sits awkwardly in her chair. The smell of alcohol wafting from every pore.

She leans against the wall and crosses her arms. "You're drunk."

"It's quite possible. Actually, if you want to get technical about it, I WAS drunk, before. Right now I'm just riding the buzz."

"Why?"

"Beats the alternative." He throws his cane onto her couch.

"No, why are you here?"

"Thought maybe I could get some."

"You're joking." Confusion, shock, disbelief. Hope?

"You're right. I am joking. I guess I'm not that far gone if I can still make a joke at your expense."

"Nice," she breathes, pushing away from the wall and crossing into her impeccably clean kitchen to tidy up. "You didn't drive here, did you?"

"I refuse to respond to such an idiotic question. I also refuse to consider the implications of your asking it."

She leans against the kitchen doorframe. "Should I call you a cab?"

"I just got here." He rests his bad leg--shoe and all--on her coffee table.

She is somewhat acquainted with House-speak; she is therefore surprised by his statement. "You're staying?"

"That was the general idea I was following when I told the taxi driver to leave. Afraid mommy and daddy will yell at you for having a man in the house this late at night?"

"It's two in the morning. You can probably see why I'm a little surprised."

"Time generally seems to move in a specific order. One to two. Two to three. Did you think the clock was just going to jump right to three?"

She sits on the arm of the chair. "I saw you."

"Is this one of those existential things?"

"Tonight," she continues. "When you were performing the necropsy on the Fosters' cat. I saw you." She picks up his unbandaged hand and runs her fingers across it, examining. "You were shaking. Uncontrollable tremors are another part of the detoxing process."

He makes no move to reclaim his hand. "You're still trying to talk me into admitting that Cuddy is right. That I should call the whole thing quits, take the pill, 'fess up that I'm an addict, go to rehab or those meetings. Not really my style." His hand pulls out of hers and drops heavily onto the seat cushion.

She stares at his shoulder, trying to find the chip. Or the chink in his defenses; either, really, worked for her.

"I'm trying to get you to let me in," she corrects. "Barring that, I'm trying to get you to allow me to help you."

His eyes find the tops of his knees and refuse to move. There is more said in the silence between them than in their words, as always.

He immediately notices the loss of heat at his right side as she rises to her feet and pinches the bridge of her nose. Drawing a large breath, she turns to meet his eyes, and immediately wishes that she hadn't.

"The alcohol thinned your blood, numbing your leg. Smart idea--and ultimately horrible for your liver. I'm guessing that you don't care much about that. It might be numb now, but if you sleep in that chair, you'll regret it in the morning." She runs a hand through her hair, and a few errant strands hang onto her fingers. "Take my bed."

He is too tired to think up a comeback; at least, this is what he tells himself. Instead, he snatches his cane from the couch and pushes himself onto uncertain feet. She walks slowly in front of him, leading him towards her darkened bedroom.

The light she switches on falls on a pair of tall black heels and the day's suit strewn sloppily in pieces over the bedspread. She rushes over to the bed and plucks up the offending garments, shoving them into a hamper in the closet.

He pokes at one of the shoes with the tip of his cane and turns it onto its side. "Why do you wear these?"

Her eyes seek his to no avail. "They're just shoes," she counters.

"These aren't just shoes. They're 'fuck-me' heels. They can't be comfortable. Why do you wear them? You wore them before your self-help book phase, so they weren't just a ploy to garner respect. Wilson wears French shoes to catch the eye of some woman in accounting. You've worn these shoes since the day I hired you." He scrubs a hand over his tired eyes and continues, "So I ask again why you wear them."

She pulls down the bedspread to cover the shaking of her hands. "They're just shoes," she says again, wrapping the statement around her like a suit of armor. "They don't mean anything." She murmurs a half-hearted "goodnight" and brushes past him, eyes trained on the floor.

------------------

On what she thinks of as the third night, she sits on her couch and waits for his knock. The book in her lap has been on the same page for an hour.

In her fridge the beer has been restocked. On her counter sits a bottle of scotch. His untouched bottle of Vicodin rests on her bedside table.

At three a.m. she abandons her vigil and locks her door.

At three-ten she lies in bed, staring at the dark figure of a prescription bottle outlined by the sodium lights peeking through her window.

------------------

The knock comes at nine-forty-seven on the fourth and final evening.

His face is pale and his brow is wet as he limps heavily into her apartment, his trembling free hand clutching onto her shoulder as she helps him inside.

"It hurts so goddamn much, Cameron," he growls through gritted teeth, and he leans against the wall, tapping the back of his head against it in a rhythmic pattern.

She slips a hand between his head and the wall, and on his next descent he does not pull away.

"Tell me what I can do to help," she says softly, her clear eyes seeking his.

What she sees there frightens her. The nearly-complete disconnection of man and mind, the breakdown of masks and facades and the subsequent presentation of something far more primal.

"Make it go away," he replies, and she thinks that in his quiet voice she hears a plea.

She nods and starts to move her hand from behind his head. "I still have your pills; I'll get you one."

His hand shoots out to grab tightly to her wrist. "No," he manages. "No pills."

Her eyes register compassion, admiration, and confusion. "What do you want me to do?"

If she could tear her eyes away from his she could confirm that what she was feeling was anything other than his cane running up the inside of her thigh. That the change in temperature she felt wasn't the combination her skirt being slowly but surely pushed further up her body and the resulting heat settling in her stomach, her cheeks.

"Help me forget about it," he says, and his cane clatters to the floor as his hand snakes around her body to push her against the door.

"Distract me," he says, pinning both her wrists above her head with one of his hands.

"Heal me," he says, running his free hand down her side to her hip, rounding it around to her stomach, trailing it up to cup one of her breasts.

"Show me a different kind of pain," he says, his teeth sinking into the tender flesh where neck meets shoulder.

She chooses, later, to forget the awkward moments. Instead she remembers a seamless transition between him dressed and him naked. She remembers instinctively knowing how not to aggravate his leg. She remembers his eyes fixed on her, passionate and unrelenting.

Her accurate memories will include a missing button from her blouse resulting from his impatience. His erection impatient and insistent against her stomach. The feel of his fingers--one, two--inside of her, exploratory and purposeful. He does not, however, explore for long; she remembers that quite distinctly.

There is no awkward and broken conversation about moving the developing activities into the bedroom to spare the leg. His eyes are glazed and fiery and unfocused and primal; she isn't entirely sure he would hear her. He is obsessively devoted to one objective, something she has not seen in the past week. She will not interrupt him.

It is a testament to her desire for him--raw, unpolished--that she is even wet at all this early on. It is uncomfortable when he pushes into her from one end and the doorknob pushes into her side from the other. He is hot and hard within her, and somewhere along the way he must have dropped her hands, as both of his are propped on either side of her body, supporting the bulk of his weight as he thrusts into her.

She is certain that despite all the weight he has shifted off of his bad leg, their activities are only adding to the pain. He adds to hers, leaving five different bite marks between her neck and shoulders, and she feels the bruising beginning. His brow is sweaty and his face is still pale and she somehow finds enough coherency to raise a hand to wipe some of the sweat off of his face.

He continues to thrust. His leg is screaming, and so is he.

When he comes, it is neither magnificent nor does it trigger the start of her own completion. He does not reach down to help her orgasm; instead, he pulls out of her and slowly hobbles his way into her bedroom.

His semen beginning to drip down the inside of her thigh, she gathers up piles of hastily-discarded clothes and rests his cane atop them, walking into the bedroom with her burdens.

She crawls into the empty side of the bed. There is a mile between their unmoving bodies as both slip into sleep.

------------------

When she wakes the following morning, the bottle of Vicodin is gone, and so is he.


End file.
